On Taqlīd: Ibn al Qayyim’s Critique of Authority in Islamic Law, by Abdul-Rahman Mustafa

Abstract

On Taqlīd : Ibn al Qayyim´s Critique of Authority in Islamic Law, by Abdul-Rahman Mustafa (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), vii + 242 pp., ISBN: 978-0-19-993751-6, $78.00 (hb) (First paragraph) This book presents the translation of the section on taqlīd of Iʿlām al-muwaqqiʿīn ʿan Rabb al-ʿālamīn by the Ḥanbalī damascene scholar, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350). Iʿlām al-muwaqqiʿīn is a long treatise about the methodology of iftāʾ. The translated text is rather long (pp. 61-192). It covers part of volume three and four of the Saudi edition of Iʿlām edited by Mashhūr ibn Ḥasan ā€l Salmān, which is part of a silsila dedicated to Ibn al-Qayyim´s works (Silsilat maktabat Ibn al-Qayyim). This series is different from two other Saudi ones published in Mecca by Dār ʿā€lam al-Fawāʾid which edits richly annotated texts of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim with extensive introductions. These two series - supervised by the scholar Bakr ibn ʿAbd Allāh Abū Zayd - are titled ā€thār al-Imām Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya wa-mā laḥiqahā min aʿmāl and ā€thār Shaykh al-islām Ibn Taymiyya wa-mā laḥiqahā min aʿmāl. They are now indispensable tools for anyone working on Ibn Taymiyya and his pupil, and it is regrettable that Iʿlām al-muwaqqiʿīn is not yet available to us among these useful editions. The one used by the translator offers a long introduction and a detailed apparatus mainly of erudite quotations and discussion of Ḥadīth.